"It was human error," said Richard Bangert, chief executive officer of Rolling Hills. "They made a mistake. When I learned of it, I immediately met with my staff on Monday. We immediately made the change in terms of making sure that our policy was very clear."

"I will apologize and work with her directly," he added. "I take it very personally. This is not representative of the hospital."

Paul Guequierre, HRC spokesman, said "Rolling Hills Hospital fixed the problem immediately" but this was a certain reminder as "discrimination still exists in the health-care arena and we need to tackle it."

HRC proposes a guide for gay and lesbian couples who can be very useful because it shows all the procedure which can be doing in advance like to prepare visitation authorization forms.